CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) is a cloud-based model for delivering contact center infrastructure and applications.
In short, CCaaS platforms help organizations manage multi-channel customer interactions more effectively.
Today’s CCaaS platforms increasingly blend in-house and third-party innovations – especially AI-driven tools – to support both customer and employee experiences across the contact center, from agents to directors.
But what makes a good CCaaS provider and what should potential buyers be considering?
In Forrester’s exploration of the current CCaaS market, it has evaluated 10 of the most significant vendors in the CCaaS space, ranking each as a Leader, Strong Performer, or Contender based on their overall performance and capabilities.
Ranking the Vendors
In whittling down the top companies, Forrester uses 29 criteria across two key evaluation categories: Current Offering and Strategy.
Here are the five highest performing vendors in each category:
Current Offering
- Genesys: 3.98/5
- NICE: 3.88/5
- Five9: 3.74/5
- Talkdesk: 3.52/5
- AWS: 3.50/5
Strategy
- NICE: 4.14/5
- Genesys: 3.88/5
- AWS: 3.84/5
- Cisco: 3.28/5
- 8×8: 3.02/5
Alongside the scores, Forrester provides a breakdown of each vendor’s portfolio and offerings.
Here’s a brief overview of each:
NICE (Leader)
Having topped the charts in Strategy and snagged second place in Current Offering, NICE pipped Genesys to top spot in this year’s Wave report.
The vendor’s CXone platform offers the “broadest capability set in the industry,” with its workforce optimization (WFO), analytics, and agent solutions drawing praise from both Forrester and customers.
The report also outlined NICE’s “significant” market presence, leading roadmap, and adoption of generative AI (GenAI) and LLMs.
Genesys (Leader)
As predicted by CX Today last month, the fight to be named the king of CCaaS was a straight shootout between NICE and Genesys.
In second place, Genesys’ Cloud CX platform garnered praise for its advanced AI orchestration capabilities, which allow the vendor to excel at workforce management (WFM) and quality management (QM).
Its AI-powered vision provides customers with impressive levels of usability and flexibility – enabling them to “take control of their customer experiences.”
AWS (Leader)
The third and final Leader in this year’s Wave report was AWS’ Amazon Connect.
The platform’s size and scale positions it as a driver of innovation with the capacity to deal directly with brands and actually “solve real business problems.”
The report also complimented the company for its “market-leading” approach to GenAI, LLMs, as well as its agent assist, self-service, and QM capabilities.
Five9 (Strong Performer)
Just missing out on the Leader category, Five9’s Intelligent CX Platform was described as a “pioneer” in the CCaaS space, which continues to evolve through its vision of combining human and AI agents to enhance users’ CX capabilities.
The vendor’s recent acquisition of Acqueon was also highlighted by Forrester for providing Five9 with “leading capabilities for outbound dialers.”
While Five9 offers a reliable CCaaS platform that covers all bases, the report suggested that its WFM solution did not have the scalability to support enterprise-level customers.
Talkdesk (Strong Performer)
Next up in the Strong Performer category is Talkdesk’s CX Cloud, whose vertical-specific approach “sets it apart” from other CCaaS vendors in the space.
The vendor’s cloud-first strategy and strong AI features were also praised by Forrester, with the report detailing how Talkdesk is particularly effective at delivering value in the financial and healthcare services markets.
However, like Five9, the vendor also falls short with limited WFM capabilities.
Sprinklr (Strong Performer)
The Sprinklr Service offers a broad platform, in part, thanks to the company’s background in marketing, sales, and social listening.
Forrester complimented Sprinklr for its innovative use of GenAI and LLMs, as well as its system architecture, which has allowed the company to scale quickly.
Unfortunately, Sprinklr’s roadmap was described as “below par” and its telephony offering is less advanced than some of its contemporaries.
Cisco (Strong Performer)
The Webex Contact Center by Cisco impressed with its strategy of offering capabilities for both internal and customer-facing communications across the enterprise. This has allowed the vendor to develop an impressive partner ecosystem and deliver “strong” adoption and retention rates.
The report also stated that Cisco is “rightly proud” of its global telephony network.
Despite these strengths, Cisco references noted that the full Webex suite often felt “clunky,” resembling the experience of using four separate products.
8×8 (Strong Performer)
The last Strong Performer in the report is the 8×8 Contact Center, which drew praise for its vision of combining unified communications (UC), contact center (CC), and communication-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) capabilities into a single platform.
The vendor also boasts an impressive global telephony offering that delivers strong, secure, and reliable voice connections.
Where 8×8 falls short of other CCaaS vendors is in its adoption of GenAI and LLMs, which prevents the company from offering the same level of AI-powered solutions.
Vonage (Contender)
The first of the two contenders in this year’s report is the Vonage Contact Center.
The platform’s major differentiator is the fact that it is designed to be imbedded and integrated within Salesforce’s CRM, which enables it to deliver “undeniable” value for Salesforce users.
While this is Vonage’s major strength, the report commended its efforts to offer more value to non-Salesforce users by providing standalone features and integrations with other CRMs.
However, despite these efforts, the platform still currently suffers from product gaps for users of other CRMs, particularly in the areas of knowledge management, agent assist, and WFO.
Twilio (Contender)
The final entrant in the 2025 Forrester Wave for CCaaS Platforms is the Twilio Flex.
The report described Twilio’s telephony capabilities as “powerful,” as well as highlighting the “strong support” that it delivers for APIs and its developer support capabilities.
Unfortunately, Twilio’s workforce and quality management, outbound dialing, and several of its out-of-the-box agent-facing tools are deemed to be “below par” by Forrester.
What to Look For in your CRM Provider
In addition to highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor, the report also provided guidance for CCaaS buyers.
Key areas to focus on when evaluating CCaaS providers include:
- Unified Platforms Simplify Management: Buyers should target CCaaS vendors that offer a wide range of capabilities – such as self-service, analytics, and WFO – in a single solution.
- Enhancing the Agent Experience: While the customer might always be right, it’s important not to overlook agents. Buyers should target CCaaS platforms that provide best-in-class QM capabilities, superior desktops, automation, and real-time guidance.
- AI as a Differentiator: AI now comes as standard for the vast majority of CCaaS platforms. In order to really maximize the potential of the tech, buyers should look for vendors that are innovating with GenAI and LLMs to unlock new use cases without needing full system replacements.
